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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23614699">love like toy trucks crashing</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/midrashic/pseuds/midrashic'>midrashic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Children, Gen, Getting Together, Kid Fic, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:35:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,945</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23614699</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/midrashic/pseuds/midrashic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Xavier may be young, but he knows what it means to love.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>X-Salon Challenge Works</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>love like toy trucks crashing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Charles Xavier experiences true love for the first time on a Sunday afternoon in September. He’s crying, because Raven has been stuck in a tree for the last forty-five minutes and Mum is too drunk to help and he’s too far away from the grounds to run and get a groundskeeper to help, because what if he’s not there and Raven <em>falls</em>? Mum told him that cats always land on their feet, but Mum is wrong about a lot of things. She was wrong when she said that it would be all right when they found out Dad had cancer. Charles has had trouble believing her about anything since.</p><p>Just as Charles is about to scale the tree himself, though he doesn’t know how he’s going to help Raven when he gets up there, and he knows that the branches are too far apart for his short little legs anyway, a voice behind him asks, “Please, why are you crying?”</p><p>Charles blinks and hastily rubs at his eyes. Behind him is a bigger boy—not much bigger, maybe third grade to Charles’s second—that he doesn’t recognize. It must be the new boy from Germany, he registers—the school is small enough that he can recognize most of the students by face, if not by name, even if they’re in his grade or not. “My cat is stuck,” Charles sniffles. Tears well up all over again and threaten to spill. “I can’t get her down.”</p><p>The new boy strolls up to him and cranes his head back to look at where Raven is perched, hissing and spitting, at the very end of the branch of a poplar tree. She’s a gorgeous cat, fur so black it’s almost blue, with amber-yellow eyes blinking down at them. Charles fancies he can see panic in her slitted eyes. “It’s okay,” he calls up to her, trying his very best to be brave and reassuring. “Just a little longer.”</p><p>“Hmm.” The boy looks at the tree, at the flimsy spaces and wide branches between them. He sets down his book bag carefully at the base of the tree, making sure not to get it muddy, and then with a grunt he hauls himself up into the branches, making Charles squeak with dismay and surprise. He’s going to get himself killed, or at least a broken arm! He teeters on the edge of one branch and reaches over to the next, even though he has to almost jump to snag it, and scrambles up, higher than Charles could ever go, but not quite as high as Raven yet.</p><p>Breathlessly, Charles watches as the boy tiptoes along one of the sturdier branches and then reaches up to Raven, who by now is watching him warily, his hands only a foot or so down from where her body is curled into a protective loaf. “Here, <em>kätzchen</em>,” he says, fingers warm and becoming. “Come back down, yes? Your human is very worried about you.”</p><p>Raven eyes him with disdain, the look she gets when she’s about to bite, and in horror, Charles covers his eyes with his sleeves. He peeks out, though, when the boy grunts, sure he’ll have to run over and catch him as he swoons from the tree, but what he sees instead is the boy, his right arm swinging out to catch another tree branch to steady himself, his left arm full of purring cat. Charles watches with huge unblinking eyes as the boy navigates down as swiftly as he got up there, jumping the last few feet to the ground and presenting him with Raven like he’s handing over a gift, all of her feet sticking out and her looking very upset about it.</p><p>Charles snatches her to him and coos over her, smoothing her fur where it got all twiggy and scolding her. Without another word, the boy picks up his bag and is heading back down the street again. “Wait!” Charles calls after him, but the boy is already far away. “Wait,” he says, more softly. In his arms, Raven <em>mrrrs</em>. Charles looks helplessly over at the hill the boy’s disappeared over. He is already deeply in love.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>

He doesn’t hesitate. Because he is proactive, or precocious—one of those p-words the adults use—he puts his plan into action the next day.</p><p>The third graders have recess while the second graders eat lunch, so Charles finishes his lunch of green grapes and a cheese sandwich quickly and then stares at the lunch monitor until her head is turned and he has the opportunity to sneak outside. Then he leaves his tray on the cafeteria table and ducks outside, trying his best to appear tall and third grader-ish. </p><p>He finds the boy hunched over a book in the grass. Charles sneaks a look; it’s a fairly simple reader, meant for the second-graders, but he remembers the Germanic tinge that had colored the boy’s words yesterday and wonders if he wants extra English lessons. “Hello!” he says brightly. The boy glances up, startled. “I’m Charles. You saved my cat yesterday.”</p><p>“Hello, Charles,” the boy says. His eyes are very pretty. They are almost green, but with a softness to them that shades darker, like the sky reflecting shadow. He closes his book carefully, with the same gentleness with which he’d treated his bag. Charles notices that his trousers are just a hair too short for him and his shirt has been re-hemmed, but he doesn’t care. He has lots of money. He can spare some for the boy he’s in love with.</p><p>“I was wondering if you would like to marry me, please,” Charles says, determined. The boy blinks at him.</p><p>“Because I saved your cat?”</p><p>“Yes,” Charles says. “And if she needs saving again, I’ll need you nearby. Also because I can teach you English and buy you new clothes and read to you if you’re bored. I’m very good at reading.” The boy is still staring at him, and Charles is getting nervous. Should he have gotten him a ring? But he hadn’t wanted to wait. Maybe he could’ve made a ring out of construction paper…</p><p>“My mama says I can’t marry anyone she doesn’t approve of,” he says after a long moment. “But you can come over and meet her this afternoon. We’re making sufganiyot.”</p><p>“All right!” Charles chirps happily. He’s not sure what sufganiyot is, but there’s an encyclopedia in the library. Maybe it’ll be in there. “What’s your name?”</p><p>“Erik,” the boy says, and smiles shyly. It’s not a huge grin, it’s not a smile the way the sun blazing on the earth is a smile, it’s sweet and small and more like the moon in daylight, a faint reminder of the nighttime hanging in the sky. It’s the most beautiful thing Charles has ever seen.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>— ⓧ —</p>
</div><p>

“Mama,” Erik introduces him, “this is Charles. He wants to marry me but I said I’d have to ask you first.”</p><p>Edie Lehnsherr is worn-looking but has the vestiges of prettiness in her hair and face. “Is that so,” she says, a note of humor bouncing along in her voice. “Charles, is it?”</p><p>Charles holds out his hand solemnly. “Mrs. Lehnsherr,” he says. “You have a very nice son.”</p><p>Edie covers her mouth as though trying not to laugh. Erik scowls at her. “I <em>am </em>nice,” he says mutinously.</p><p>“Oh, of course you are, <em>schatz</em>,” Edie says. “I was just surprised at how grown-up you’re getting. Are you going to be baking with us, Charles?”</p><p>“Sufganiyot is a pillowy pastry fried in oil,” Charles pipes up helpfully. “Like donuts!”</p><p>“Yes,” Edie says with a smile as she takes Erik’s hand in her own, leaving Charles to hold Erik’s other hand. “Like donuts.”</p><p>On their way to Erik’s house, Charles tells Edie the whole Raven saga, and she nods at all the right places and sighs with admiration when he tells her about how Erik saved Raven from the wiles of the poplar tree. Or something like admiration. “Erik, I’ve told you not to climb trees,” she says, but softens when she looks at Charles’s crestfallen face. “Oh, well, I suppose I can make an exception <em>just once </em>for this young man, here. But no more, you understand me?”</p><p>Erik’s house is small—the Xavier mansion is many times the size of their entire block—but well-kept and cozy. There are still moving boxes stacked neatly in the den, but the kitchen is unpacked and though some of the bowls and mugs are chipped with fading paint, everything is meticulously clean. Edie holds out a large bowl and asks Charles to fill it with a little water—“hot, like washing-water,” she tells him—while she adds a coarse brown powder to it that makes it fizz and bubble. “What’s that?” Charles asks, enthralled.</p><p>“Yeast,” Edie says, and explains how yeast makes bread have little air bubbles. </p><p>“Can I do my science fair project on that?” Charles asks, and Edie laughs and says he can. It cements Charles’s suspicion that food science is the <em>best </em>science. He’d done his science fair project last year on vinegar-and-baking soda, but this is much better, because vinegar and baking soda aren’t actually very edible when you put them together.</p><p>They have to wait a little bit while the dough rises, and Charles shows off his reading skills by pulling out Erik’s second-grade primer and reading to him. Erik seems suitably impressed. Charles thinks they’d make a good couple. He’s not a baby, he knows that love at first sight isn’t real, but he thinks they’re <em>compatible</em>, in the way adults talk about being compatible. Erik has trouble reading and Charles is good at it. Charles doesn’t like his mother but Erik clearly loves his. He bets that Erik would share the crayons really well.</p><p>When the dough is done, Edie lets Erik and Charles mash it into shape with their hands, and then cuts the flat piece of dough they’ve pressed into little squares with a knife. Hot oil is already frying on the stove, and she makes them stand back while she fries them, six at a time, and removes them, steaming-hot and sugared, onto a paper towel-lined plate. Erik tries to sneak one but Edie beats him off with her slotted spoon. Then Edie shows them how to poke holes in the little square puffs of dough and squeeze jam inside, and it really is like a jelly donut.</p><p>They’re <em>amazing. </em>Charles grins at Erik takes a napkin and begins wiping at his mouth. He doesn’t even mind when Erik does it, because Erik is smiling softly and not scowling like his mother or one of the maids. Charles has to leave before it gets <em>really </em>dark, but Erik walks him out into the garden to wait for his chauffeur and says, “Mama said she likes you, so I guess I can marry you,” and kisses him on the cheek and Charles almost faints, he’s so giddy and delighted. He claps his hands together with glee and chases Erik’s cheek with his own lips to get him back, maybe make him feel a fraction of the dizziness that had descended over him when Erik had kissed him.</p><p>“Can we have Raven do the wedding bits, like when she asks if anyone objects?” Charles asks.</p><p>“I don’t see why not,” Erik says seriously. And they chat about their upcoming wedding until the chauffeur arrives to bring Charles home, but Charles daydreams about it, daydreams that slip into actual dreams when his head hits the pillow, Erik smiling at him and accepting his construction-paper ring, and saying, “I do.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful">InsertSthMeaningful</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/librata/pseuds/librata">librata</a> for helping me out with brainstorming. Written for X-Salon's <a href="https://x-salon.tumblr.com/post/614323198809473024/">AU April bingo</a>: As Children. Coast with me at <a href="https://midrashic.tumblr.com">tumblr</a>, and if you like my work, buy me a coffee. And come join us on the <a href="https://discordapp.com/invite/7HyhZ5R">X-Men X-Traordinaire discord</a>!</p><p>My comment policy boils down to one thing: <b>Please comment.</b> You. Yes, you in particular. If you would like examples, a simple heart emoji or “+kudos” now that the multiple kudos function has been disabled are hugely appreciated. Your comment does not have to be profound. Your comment does not have to be long. If all you have the energy for is the heart emoji, i appreciate that much more than a kudos or a bookmark. A kudos is not interchangeable with a short comment that says “great job!” or something similar. I always respond to comments. If you feel like your comments mean less than those from people I regularly interact with, you’re wrong; comments mean more from a stranger. I would prefer a “please update” to no comment. I would prefer a short comment to no comment. I would prefer criticism to no comment. Comments keep writers writing and in the fandoms you love. <b>Please comment.</b></p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
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        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24906850">love like toy trucks crashing [Art]</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/IreneADonovan/pseuds/IreneADonovan">IreneADonovan</a>
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